The coronavirus pandemic hit another unwelcome milestone Tuesday morning as the number of COVID-19 infections worldwide hit 20,092,855, according to the latest data collected by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
But the actual number of cases in both the U.S. and worldwide is likely to be much higher, health authorities say. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 40% of people with COVID-19 are actually asymptomatic. Other data have suggested that 16% of coronavirus transmission is due to carriers that have no symptoms or show only very mild symptoms that, although contagious, may not be believed to have the disease.
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The virus can be detected in humans one to three days before the onset of symptoms, with the highest viral loads around the day of onset of symptoms, followed by a slow decline over time.
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One case study from the quarantine Italian city of Vò, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature in June found that more than 40% of COVID-19 infections had no symptoms. With a population of about 3,200 people, Vò reported the first COVID-related death of Italy on 20 February. As a result, the city’s residents were quarantined for 14 days.
Some 2.6% of the city tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, at the beginning of the lockdown, but that figure dropped to 1.2% after a few weeks. At this time, 40% of those infections were people who did not show symptoms. The researchers also concluded that it took 9.3 days for people who tested positive to be virus-free.
“Someone with an asymptomatic infection is very unaware of carrying the virus and could, according to their lifestyle and occupation, meet a large number of people without changing their behavior,” found the study, which was conducted by researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Padua.
“If we find a certain number of symptomatic people positive, we expect the same number of asymptomatic carriers that are much more difficult to identify and isolate,” said Enrico Lavezzo, a professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Padua.
A separate study from China on asymptomatic cases “suggests that the proportion of infected people who never developed symptoms was 23%,” the World Health Organization said last month. “Several studies have shown that people infect others before they even get sick, which is supported by available data for viral sites. One study of transmission in Singapore reported that 6.4% of secondary cases resulted from pre-symptomatic transmission, ‘the organization added.
“Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 can occur through direct, indirect, or close contact with infected people via infected secretions such as saliva and respiratory secretions or their respiratory droplets, which are discharged as an infected cough, sneeze, talk or sing, “This makes asymptomatic transmission much more prevalent,” said scientists.
To know when an infected person can spread SARS-CoV-2 is just as important as how the virus spreads so fast. WHO recently published a scientific letter on how the virus spreads, especially among those who do not show symptoms.
The virus can be detected in humans one to three days before the onset of symptoms, with the highest viral loads around the day of onset of symptoms, followed by a slow decline over time. This level of infection appears to be one to two weeks for asymptomatic individuals, and up to three weeks or more for patients with mild to moderate illness.
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This level of infection appears to be one to two weeks for asymptomatic individuals, and up to three weeks or more for patients with mild to moderate illness, according to research.
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However, all studies on asymptomatic people have limitations, the WHO added: “For example, some studies did not clearly describe how they followed up with individuals who were asymptomatic at the time of testing to determine if they ever developed symptoms. Others defined “asymptomatic” very narrow as individuals who have never developed fever or respiratory symptoms, rather than those who have developed no symptoms at all. “
The U.S. COVID-19 death toll could reach nearly 300,000 by December 1, but consistent onset of mask wear today could save about 70,000 lives, according to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine. “It turns out that people wear masks and more often distance themselves socially as infections increase, then let people drop after a while if infections subside and stop taking these measures to protect themselves and others,” said IHME Director Christopher Murray.
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COVID-19 has now killed at least 736,254 people worldwide, and the US ranks 15th in the world for deaths per 100,000 people (49.5), says Johns Hopkins University. With 10,444 deaths, California recently became the third U.S. state to register more than 10,000 deaths, after New York (32,781 deaths) and New Jersey (15,878 deaths).
California Democrat Govin Newsom last month announced a rollback of statewide operations at restaurants, including bars, zoos, wineries, museums, card rooms and movie theaters. “This is in every province in the state of California, not just those on the waiting list,” he said.
The closure also affected indoor operations of gyms, places of worship, offices for non-critical sectors, hairdressers, beauty salons, indoor malls and other places of business in 30 counties on the “monitoring list of California”, which 80% of ‘ the state of California.
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New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic in the US in the early days of the pandemic, was a case study in how some Americans fared better than others, and how the virus is transmitted.
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On the occasion of the 1918 flu outbreak, health writer Ed Yong warned of another pandemic and now says the U.S. should learn the lessons of the past seven months, adding, “COVID-19 is just a herb of worse plagues to come. ”
“Despite many warnings, the US destroyed every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its significant advantages – enormous resources, biomedical power, scientific expertise – it floundered, “he wrote in the September issue of The Atlantic. While South Korea, Thailand, Iceland, Slovakia, and Australia are “decisively” acting to flatten and bend the curve of new infections, the US is only reaching a plateau in the spring, which in the summer turned into a terrible uphill slope, “he said.
Yong said he had spoken to more than 100 health experts since the pandemic began and summed up the US mistakes in this way: “A cunning response from a government denied expertise gave the coronavirus a boost”, compounded by “chronic experience of public health, “he said.” An inflated, inefficient health care system left hospitals unprepared for the next wave of disease. Racist policies that have lasted since the days of colonization and slavery have left Native and Black Americans particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. “
New York City, the former American epicenter of the pandemic, was a case study in how some Americans fared better than others and how the virus is transmitted. Black and Latino people were hospitalized at twice the rate of Caucasians during the height of the crisis, according to data released in May by the city.
Black New Yorkers were hospitalized at a rate of 632 per 100,000 people, while Caucasians were hospitalized at a rate of 284 per 100,000 people. Black and Spanish residents died at a rate of 21.3 per 100,000, while non-white races died at a rate of 40.2 per 100,000, according to the data.
One theory: More foreign Americans are more likely to live in multi-generational households, and Asian and Hispanic people are more likely than white people to be immigrants, according to the Pew Research Center. People of color are more likely to work in frontline jobs that carry a greater risk of contracting COVID-19.
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President Donald Trump on Saturday bypassed the nation’s legislators as he demanded the authority to postpone payroll taxes and replace a past unemployment benefit with a lower amount after negotiations with Congress on a new coronavirus rescue package collapsed.
The executive order and memoranda that provide demonstrable relief amid the invasive pandemic do not seem possible or legal, analysts said, adding that the wording of the orders raises more questions than answers.
The US has the highest COVID-19 deaths of any country (163,465), followed by Brazil (101,752), Mexico (53,003), the United Kingdom (46,611) and India (45,257). The virus has infected at least 5,094,565 people in the US, most from every country.
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House coronavirus task force, has been optimistic about a vaccine arriving in late 2020 and early 2021, saying people should continue to socialize to practice distancing and wearing masks.
Fauci has said he is hopeful that a coronavirus vaccine could be developed in early 2021, but has previously said it is unlikely a vaccine will deliver 100% immunity; he said the best realistic outcome, based on other faxes, would be 70% to 75% efficiency. Other epidemiologists are even more cautious about a vaccine that erases the transmission of the virus at any time.
“We are not going to reach out to eight-plus-billion people in the world right now,” Michael Osterholm, an University of Minnesota epidemiologist who acknowledged that the outbreak would be a pandemic in January, MarketWatch said. earlier this month. “And if we do not get sustainable immunity, we could potentially look at vaccination on a routine basis, if we can do that. We really have to deal with living with this virus, at least my life, and at the same time it does not mean that we can not do much about it. “
The Dow Jones Industrial Index DJIA,
and S&P 500 SPX,
was slightly up Tuesday as investors awaited progress on round two of a fiscal stimulus during the coronavirus pandemic; of the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP,
was in negative territory.
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